Change Starts Here

This is Life

This is Life

Read Time: 2 minutes

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Sometimes I will find myself running errands, sending emails or marking off whatever tasks I have for the day, and am struck by this feeling of not having any control, of just going through the motions. On a boat floating down the river, it’s possible to see what is going by, but I can’t affect the route or change directions.

We all get so focused on the minutiae of our day-to-day life that we forget a very simple truth: This is Life. This is it. There is no re-do, there is no reset button…..if you get to the end and you feel like you haven’t fit in enough or done everything you wanted to….well, you’re shit out of luck.

We have much more control than we give ourselves credit for. Tired of getting to the end of the weekend and having nothing to show for it? Load up the car and have a weekend adventure, going somewhere you have never gone before. Hate your job? Bust your ass to get a new one. Want to learn a new language? Starting TODAY set aside 30 minutes per day to study online with Duolingo.

There is this great scene in High Fidelity, where the main character drops this:

“I can see now I never really committed to Laura. I always had one foot out the door, and that prevented me from doing a lot of things, like thinking about my future and… I guess it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open. And that’s suicide. By tiny, tiny increments.”

While he was talking about a girl, it has always seemed so apt for how a lot of us live our lives. We keep saying “some day” or “next week” or “when I can clear up my schedule” that we forget just how quickly time passes by. There is no perfect time to take that trip, there is no perfect time to start that new project, there is no perfect time to catch up with old friends, and if you keep on hesitating it will never happen. Our time on Earth is so finite, so limited, that there is just no room for hesitation or fear.